M. Shanin, approaching the question in his brochure[74] from a somewhat different angle, inadvertently provided yet another confirmation of the very nationalization that he so dislikes. Through the example of Ireland, through analysis of the conditions of bourgeois reformism in agriculture, M. Shanin proved only one thing: the incompatibility of the principles of private land property with communal or state ownership of land (but this incompatibility must be proved also through general theoretical analysis, which Shanin did not even recall) – then he proved, perhaps, only the necessity of recognizing property for any state-reformist activity in the sphere of capitalistically developing agriculture. But all of Shanin's proofs miss the mark entirely: of course, under conditions of bourgeois reformism only private property in land is conceivable; of course, the preservation of private property in the bulk of the lands of the United Kingdom left no other path for its part except the path of private property. But what does this have to do with the "peasant agrarian revolution" in Russia? M. Shanin did indeed point out the correct path, but he pointed it out for Stolypin's agrarian reform, not for the peasant agrarian revolution[75]. M. Shanin has not the slightest awareness of the distinction between the two – and without clarifying this distinction, it is absurd to speak of a social-democratic agrarian program in the Russian revolution. And when M. Shanin, guided, of course, by the very best intentions, defends confiscation against redemption, he loses all historical perspective. He forgets that in bourgeois society confiscation, i.e., expropriation without compensation, is just as absolutely incompatible with reformism as is nationalization of land. To speak of confiscation and yet allow a reformist, rather than revolutionary, solution to the agrarian question – this is the same as submitting a petition to Stolypin for the abolition of landlord landownership.

Another aspect of Shanin's brochure – the emphatic stress on the agricultural character of our agricultural crisis, the absolute necessity of transition to higher forms of economy, of raising the technique of agriculture, which is incredibly low in Russia, etc. These correct propositions Shanin developed in such an incredibly one-sided manner, he passed over in silence the destruction of serf-based latifundia and the change in landownership relations as a condition for this technical revolution to such a degree that the perspective obtained was radically false. For Stolypin's agrarian reform also leads toward the technical uplift of agriculture, and correctly from the point of view of landlord interests. The forcible fragmentation of the commune by the laws of November 9, 1906, and the like, the planting of farmsteads and the subsidization of separate farm holdings – this is by no means a mirage, as frivolous chatterers of democratic journalism sometimes say, this is the reality of economic progress while preserving landlord power and landlord interests. This is an incredibly slow path and an incredibly painful one for the broadest masses of the peasantry and for the proletariat, but this path is the only possible path for capitalist Russia, if the peasant agrarian revolution does not triumph.

Look at the question posed by Shanin from the standpoint of such a revolution. New agricultural technique requires the reconstruction of all the conditions of the age-old, ossified, wild, ignorant, impoverished peasant economy on allotment land. The three-field system must be cast overboard, the primitive tools of labor, the patriarchal lack of money of the agriculturalist, the routine stockbreeding, the naive, bear-like ignorance of market conditions and requirements. Well then? Is it possible to revolutionize the economy while conserving the system of landownership? And partition among the present allotment proprietors is the conservation of half[76] medieval landownership. Partition could be progressive if it consolidated new economy, new agriculture, casting the old to the winds. But partition cannot fulfill the role of an impetus to new agriculture if it is based on the old allotment landownership. Comrade Borisov, an advocate of partition, said in Stockholm: "Our agrarian program is a program for the period of developing revolution, the period of breaking down the old order and organizing a new socio-political system. This is its fundamental idea. Social-Democracy must not bind itself to decisions obliging it to support any particular form of economy. In this struggle of new social forces against the foundations of the old system, one must sever the tangled knot with a decisive blow" (p. 125 of the "Protocols"). All this is completely correct and excellently expressed. And all this speaks for nationalization, because only it truly "breaks" all the old medieval landownership, only it truly severs the tangled knot, providing new farms complete freedom to develop on nationalized land. The question is: where is the criterion for determining whether new agriculture has already developed enough to adapt partition of land to it – rather than consolidate through partition the old obstacles to new economy? There can be only one criterion – practice. No statistics in the world can account for how far the elements of peasant bourgeoisie in a given country have "hardened," so as to adjust landownership to economy on the land. Only the proprietors themselves, in their mass, can account for this. And the impossibility of such accounting at the present moment is proved by the uprising of the peasant masses in our revolution with the program of nationalization of land. The small landfarmer always and everywhere to such a degree becomes bound up with his economy (if it is truly his economy and not a scrap of compulsory-labor landlord economy, as is often the case in Russia) that the "fanatical" defense of land property appears in him at a certain historical period and for a certain time as inevitable. If among the mass of Russian peasants in the present epoch, instead of the fanaticism of proprietors – a fanaticism cultivated by all ruling classes, all liberal-bourgeois politicians – the demand for nationalization of land has spread and established itself, then it would be childishness or stupid pedantry to explain this by the influence of publicists of "*Russian Wealth*"{97} or the pamphlets of Mr. Chernov. This is explained by the fact that the real conditions of life of the small landfarmer, the small proprietor in the village, place before him the economic task not of consolidating already-developed new agriculture through partition of lands into property, but of clearing the ground for the formation (from existing elements) of new agriculture on "free," i.e., nationalized, land. The fanaticism of the proprietor may and should in due course appear as the demand to secure one's economy from the already-hatched farmer. Nationalization of land had to become in the Russian revolution the demand of the peasant masses, as the watchword of farmers wishing to smash the medieval shell. Therefore, the preaching of partition by social-democrats, addressed to the nationalization-minded peasant masses, who are only just beginning to enter the conditions of the final "sorting out" destined to single out farmers capable of creating capitalist agriculture – such preaching is glaring historical tactlessness, inability to grasp the concrete historical moment.

Our social-democratic "partitionists," comrades Finn, Borisov, and Shanin, are free from that theoretical dualism into which the "municipalists" fall, down to their vulgar critique of Marx's theory of rent (on this below), but they make an error of another kind – an error of historical perspective. Standing in theoretical terms on the common correct position (and differing thereby from the "municipalists"), they repeat the error of our "cut-off sections" program of 1903. The source of that latter error was that, while correctly determining the direction of development, we incorrectly determined the moment of development. We assumed that the elements of capitalist agriculture had already fully developed in Russia, developed both in landlord economy (minus the bondage "cut-off sections" – hence the demand for cut-offs), and developed in peasant economy, which seemed to have singled out a strong peasant bourgeoisie and therefore incapable of a "peasant agrarian revolution." It was not "fear" of the peasant agrarian revolution that gave birth to the erroneous program, but an overestimation of the degree of capitalist development in Russian agriculture. The remnants of serfdom seemed to us then a minor detail – capitalist economy on allotment and on landlord land appeared as a fully mature and strengthened phenomenon.

The revolution exposed this error. It confirmed the direction of development determined by us. Marxist analysis of the classes of Russian society has been so brilliantly confirmed by the entire course of events and particularly by the first two Dumas that non-Marxist socialism is undermined once and for all. But the remnants of serfdom in the countryside proved to be much stronger than we thought; they provoked a nationwide movement of the peasantry; they made of this movement the whetstone of the entire bourgeois revolution. The role of hegemon, always indicated by revolutionary social-democracy as belonging to the proletariat in the bourgeois liberation movement, had to be defined more precisely as the role of leader, conducting the peasantry forward. Conducting it toward what? Toward the bourgeois revolution in its most consistent and decisive form. The correction of the error consisted in the fact that instead of the particular task of struggle against remnants of the old in the agricultural system, we had to pose the task of struggle against all the old agricultural system. Instead of the cleansing of landlord economy, we posed its destruction.

But this correction, made under the influence of the impressive course of events, did not compel many of us to think through to the end our new determination of the degree of capitalist development in Russian agriculture. If the demand for confiscation of all landlord lands turned out to be historically correct – and it undoubtedly did – then this signified that broad development of capitalism requires new relations of landownership, that the embryos of capitalism in landlord economy can and must be sacrificed to the broad and free development of capitalism on the basis of renewed small economy. To accept the demand for confiscation of landlord lands means to recognize the possibility and necessity of renewal of small agricultural economy under capitalism.

Is this admissible? Is support for small economy under capitalism not an adventure? Is this renewal of small culture not an empty dream? Is this not demagogic "peasant-catching," *Bauernfang*? Yes, undoubtedly yes, many comrades thought so. But they were mistaken. Renewal of small economy is possible even under capitalism, if the historical task consists in struggle against the pre-capitalist system. Thus America renewed small economy, having revolutionarily smashed slave-holding latifundia and created conditions for the most rapid, most free development of capitalism. In the Russian revolution, the struggle for land is nothing other than the struggle for the renewed path of capitalist development. The consistent watchword of such renewal is the nationalization of land. To exclude from it the allotment lands is economically reactionary (we shall speak of the political reactionism of such exclusion separately). The "partitionists," however, leap over the historical task of the given revolution, presuppose as already solved that for which the mass peasant struggle has only just begun. Instead of pushing forward the process of renewal – instead of clarifying to the peasantry the conditions of consistent renewal – they already are tailoring a robe for the pacified, renewed farmer[77].

"To every season its own time." From support for partition social-democracy cannot disavow itself. At another historical moment, at another stage of agrarian evolution, partition may prove inevitable. But the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia in 1907, partition expresses in a completely incorrect manner.